Old Family Photographs - Keep Your Memories Alive
The loss of a parent is an incredibly sad event that will occur in everyone's life at some point.
It's the very inevitability of it that can be so overwhelmingly crushing and hard to bear.
While we can and will do almost anything to keep our family safe and secure we can't stop the relentless march of time.
Our parents who as children we believed were eternal flames, enduring, protecting, guiding, providing, who were there when we woke in the morning and there when we went to bed at night.
But they are there no more, except in our hearts, our minds, and in our memories.
When the pain starts to subside and we re-establish daily routines without them the grieving and healing can begin.
It becomes an opportunity to reflect on what's important in our lives, and to endeavour to make sure that the people most important to us can never depart this world not knowing that we loved them.
Work and money are less important, less of a focus in our lives.
It can be a hugely heart wrenching task clearing personal belongings and more than a few tears will be shed, but it can often provide a bittersweet opportunity to help the healing process along.
You will uncover old battered or faded photographs of holidays and family events and Christmases that you had long forgotten, but that were treasured memories of your parents watching their children grow up.
Or there can be envelopes stuffed with negatives for which the original prints have long since been separated and lost.
Don't ever be tempted to throw these away.
Simple scratches, badly faded colours, creative handiwork with a biro - these problems can all be repaired and you can reinvigorate the photos and revitalise the memories.
Negatives can be scanned to give prints as fresh as the day the original photo was taken.
The latest photo enhancement software allows you to fix them all.
With a little investment of time and money you can develop the skills to fix any photo problem.
Even the most basic of photo editing programs can create jaw-dropping improvements to your photos and there are books and plenty of free tutorials on the web to help you develop your restoration skills.
There are high end programs you can pay a few hundred for, but there are plenty of software programs available for a more modest investment and these are more than adequate for most problems.
You might not feel like doing anything with them for a while, but you will get such a buzz out of repairing a family photo that was all but destined for the bin or consigned to a box at the back of the cupboard.
If you don't have the time or the inclination to try it yourself, or would find it too painful to edit your own family photographs you can always use a professional service, but the most important thing is to realise that you can give old photos a new lease of life and that they in turn can help us keep the memories of our loved ones alive.
It's the very inevitability of it that can be so overwhelmingly crushing and hard to bear.
While we can and will do almost anything to keep our family safe and secure we can't stop the relentless march of time.
Our parents who as children we believed were eternal flames, enduring, protecting, guiding, providing, who were there when we woke in the morning and there when we went to bed at night.
But they are there no more, except in our hearts, our minds, and in our memories.
When the pain starts to subside and we re-establish daily routines without them the grieving and healing can begin.
It becomes an opportunity to reflect on what's important in our lives, and to endeavour to make sure that the people most important to us can never depart this world not knowing that we loved them.
Work and money are less important, less of a focus in our lives.
It can be a hugely heart wrenching task clearing personal belongings and more than a few tears will be shed, but it can often provide a bittersweet opportunity to help the healing process along.
You will uncover old battered or faded photographs of holidays and family events and Christmases that you had long forgotten, but that were treasured memories of your parents watching their children grow up.
Or there can be envelopes stuffed with negatives for which the original prints have long since been separated and lost.
Don't ever be tempted to throw these away.
Simple scratches, badly faded colours, creative handiwork with a biro - these problems can all be repaired and you can reinvigorate the photos and revitalise the memories.
Negatives can be scanned to give prints as fresh as the day the original photo was taken.
The latest photo enhancement software allows you to fix them all.
With a little investment of time and money you can develop the skills to fix any photo problem.
Even the most basic of photo editing programs can create jaw-dropping improvements to your photos and there are books and plenty of free tutorials on the web to help you develop your restoration skills.
There are high end programs you can pay a few hundred for, but there are plenty of software programs available for a more modest investment and these are more than adequate for most problems.
You might not feel like doing anything with them for a while, but you will get such a buzz out of repairing a family photo that was all but destined for the bin or consigned to a box at the back of the cupboard.
If you don't have the time or the inclination to try it yourself, or would find it too painful to edit your own family photographs you can always use a professional service, but the most important thing is to realise that you can give old photos a new lease of life and that they in turn can help us keep the memories of our loved ones alive.
